


Part of a Very Long Story

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Love Confessions, M/M, surprisingly helpful Pitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:36:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21981058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "In the movie, Pitch held Baby Tooth captive and was going to kill her if Jack didn’t give him his staff. Jack tried to refuse, but ended up surrendering his staff to Pitch. Instead of releasing Baby Tooth, Pitch threw her away into a crevasse in an Antarctic glacier and broke Jack’s staff in half.When Jack’s staff broke, there was a blue glow around Jack’s chest where is heart would be and he cried out and curled up as if he was in pain. What if Jack Frost’s staff is literally Jack’s heart and powers? If the staff breaks, his powers leave him and he becomes weak and vulnerable. And if his staff is destroyed, you fill in the blank. But if the staff is fixed, all’s well.And since Jack is immortal and can’t die, if he’s impaled by his broken staff, what then? Turn to stone? Turn to ice? Sleep until freed?Short summary: I’d like Jack’s staff to be taken from him, broken in front of him, and used to impale him. It doesn’t have to be the same scene as in the movie. Happy ending is NEEDED!!!...[cut for length]"Well, this was going to be a short fill, but then I got excited about having Pitch and Jamie interact. (They’re not romantic rivals, though.) (Jamie is 18 in this story.)
Relationships: Jamie Bennett/Jack Frost
Kudos: 49
Collections: Bennefrost Short Fics





	Part of a Very Long Story

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 7/3/2013.
> 
> Here's the rest of the prompt: "I’d prefer Jack end up with Jamie but Pitch is fine too. 
> 
> Bonus 1: Jamie helps fix the staff until Jack can do it correctly.  
> Bonus 2: …sexy times…? Please?"

Just turned eighteen, Jamie supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that Jack didn’t come to visit him on the first day of winter break. He shouldn’t be surprised the snow doesn’t smell quite the same as last year. He knew it had to happen sometime. Maybe it should have happened sooner. After all, he doesn’t really _believe_ , does he? He knows.  
  
He turns over in his bed, squashing his pillow into a shape he hopes will help him sleep, trying unsuccessfully to stop thinking about these things.  
  
He wishes that it didn’t have to be this way. If he’s lost Jack, that means he’s lost the others too, and he never had the chance to properly say goodbye—though of course he doesn’t want to say goodbye to any of them, especially Jack.  
  
Then again, maybe Jack was just busy. Younger kids probably needed him more now. But no, that wasn’t right either. The weather forecasters had been remarking that the snowfall up to this date had been lighter than it had in years. Maybe there was something wrong? If there was, how could he even find out? If only there was a way for him to know that he hadn’t just aged away from his friends, from that world of magic.   
  
He sighs and pushes his pillow to one corner of the bed and sprawls out along the diagonal. He’s gotten so tall that it’s the only way he fits anymore. In a further effort to get comfortable, he dangles his arm over the side, and that’s when it happens.  
  
An icy grip like a vice captures his hand.  
  
“Aaugh HOLY FUCK!” Jamie pulls his hand back as fast as he can, dragging none other than Pitch Black out from under his bed.  
  
“Good to see you too,” Pitch says, adjusting his robes. “Now get dressed. We need to get going as soon as possible. I don’t know how much time we have. You have a car, don’t you?”  
  
“What the fuck are you talking about?”  
  
“Language, my dear boy, language. Something’s happened to Jack, and no, it’s not my fault. I was merely the first to find him. I tried to solve the problem myself, but even aside from my usual inability to fix things, I think this problem might only be solvable by you.”  
  
“Why should I believe you?”  
  
“Because I’m standing here talking to you, that’s why! Do you think this would be happening if your personal Guardian was out and about?”  
  
It was a good point. “I am going to get in so much trouble,” Jamie mutters. “Hey, do you mind?”  
  
Pitch rolls his eyes and turns away while Jamie changes into jeans and a sweater. “Your modesty is charming,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’ve already seen you naked, you know.”  
  
“What?” Jamie’s voice cracks embarrassingly on the word.   
  
“Oh, you know, it was that time you couldn’t figure out your locker combination to get your calculator for that vastly important calculus final that you hadn’t studied for and weren’t sure what room it was in. Dreadfully boring, really.”  
  
“You’re doing a really poor job of making me feel better about getting in a car with you and driving to God knows where.”  
  
“I prefer it when you’re uneasy. Now, I assume you can sneak out of your house?”

* * *

  
  
The half-empty Redbull in the cupholder has so far done little to dispel Jamie’s sense of the extreme weirdness of the night. Every time he glances over to see Pitch awkwardly folded in the passenger seat, black hair brushing against the falling liner, he has to wonder if he hasn’t lost his mind.  
  
And he glances over at Pitch a lot, because as it turns out, Pitch is an extremely annoying passenger. He had started bitching at Jamie to put his seatbelt on even before they were out of the driveway. On the way out of town it had been “slow down” this and “watch for ice” that.  
  
“You know how to drive a car?” Jamie had finally asked.  
  
“I know why boys your age have the highest insurance rates.”  
  
Thankfully, Pitch calms down as they travel out into the country.  
  
“Where are we going?” Jamie asks.  
  
“I don’t know the name of the place,” Pitch answers. He keeps turning his head as though he’s listening for something. “But there was a road nearby, so you’ll be able to drive to it. I just have to…”  
  
“Can you sense where Jack is?”  
  
“Not normally. But now…Head west on this next road.”  
  
“Look, Pitch—are you going to tell me what happened now, or what? Why me?”  
  
Pitch frowns. “I don’t know exactly what happened. I only saw the results.   
  
“How to explain this? I am not the Guardians’ only enemy, however, most of the others are of a rather…lesser…quality. None of them could stand against North, Bunnymund, Toothiana, certainly not Sandy—”  
  
“You call the guy who kicked your ass by a cute nickname?”  
  
“Please be quiet, there’s only time to explain one thing you won’t be able to understand tonight. Now, the established Guardians have enough strength from belief to face the minor threats. Jack, as of yet, does not, though he bears the Guardian name. Anything facing him is getting into a fair fight.  
  
“Jack lost his most recent fight. I found him in a snowy clearing, in very bad shape. His staff had been broken.”  
  
“Yeah, you would know how bad that was.”  
  
“Unfortunately I’m not done. That staff, as is obvious to anyone who spends time around Jack, is tied to his life, heart, center—what have you. Now, when I found Jack, the staff was not merely broken. One part of it had been used to impale Jack through the heart.”  
  
“I—I don’t think I heard you right,” Jamie says, taking a shaky breath.  
  
“No, I’m pretty sure you did. Now, the problem with this—”  
  
“ASIDE FROM THE OBVIOUS?”  
  
“Yes, aside from the obvious. Jack’s mostly immortal, but he’s very afraid of dying. That’s how I found him. He’s right to be afraid. As far as I could tell, with the impaling he should have died, leaving his body very vulnerable to invasion by lesser spirits, including, possibly, the one who did this to him in the first place. Yes. Good, Jamie. The thought of something malevolent in possession of Jack’s powers should frighten you.”  
  
“How can _I_ help, though?”  
  
“I am not exactly sure. This is what I know: Jack is not only afraid of dying, he’s afraid of dying without seeing you again. Also, the only reason Jack would not have died due to his injury would be if his heart was not actually with him.”  
  
“But I thought the staff was his heart?”  
  
“I don’t know, Jamie, it’s all very complicated and half-metaphorical. In my opinion Jack never should started relying on the staff so much. Turn left here.”  
  
“Dude, this is a state park! The gate’s closed at this time of night.”  
  
“I’ll deal with that. Just turn off your headlights, drive slowly forward, and kindly believe that we won’t hit anything.”  
  


* * *

  
  
“So why don’t you have your nightmares with you?” Jamie asks as they hike off trail towards Jack. “And why’d you make the guess you did about what the thing that tried to kill Jack wanted?”  
  
“It’s a very long story.”  
  
“Oh, come on—”  
  
“Billions of years long. This isn’t the time.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Jack has always been pale, but now he looks faded. He’s been pulled into the shelter of a large pine tree—by Pitch, Jamie supposes—and lain on his side so that the fragment of his staff sticking through his chest doesn’t cause any more damage.  
  
Seeing Jack like that, Jamie feels a lot calmer than he thinks he should. “Are you…?” He looks up at Pitch, who is standing very close to him.   
  
“Yes,” says Pitch. “It’s very good, even without you feeling it first. There’s also a great deal of it and you need to stay collected right now.”  
  
Jamie kneels down and gently touches Jack’s face. He’s wanted to do that for a while now, but he never thought it would happen this way.  
  
Jack opens his eyes, smiling weakly when he recognizes Jamie. “You’re here. How did you find me?”  
  
“Pitch brought me.”  
  
“Pitch!” Jack begins to struggle to sit up.  
  
“No, stay still. I—I think he really wants to help you. He wasn’t the one that did this, was he?”  
  
Jack shakes his head. “Something else.” He pauses. “Jamie. If I don’t get my staff out of my chest. If I don’t fix it. I think I’m going to die. And I want you to know, before that happens, that—for a few years now—please don’t hate me—I love you.”  
  
“Didn’t even give me a chance to try helping before confessing,” Jamie says, smiling a little. “Pitch said you were afraid of dying without seeing me. That why?”  
  
“Afraid to tell you. Too weird. Saw you grow up.”  
  
“It’ll probably help,” Jamie says, “to know that I was afraid of telling you the same thing. Too weird. Saw you not grow up.”  
  
“You have his heart,” Pitch interrupts. “You can touch the staff, repair it.”  
  
“This is probably going to hurt,” Jamie says, knowing that he shouldn’t delay, that he’d rather have a living lover than a pristine deathbed confession.  
  
“Try to join the pieces once the one in my chest is out.” Jack takes a slow breath. “I can deal with the pain.”  
  
The fragment piercing Jack is lodged deeply, and it takes Jamie three excruciating pulls to get it free. When he finally does, he matches the broken ends together and they begin to knit almost immediately. Jack sits up, the hole in his chest healing at the same rapid rate, his normal color and expressions returning.  
  
After several minutes of recovery—and smiling besottedly at Jamie—he looks up to Pitch, almost as an afterthought. “Thank you. But why?”  
  
“I wasn’t lying about wanting a family.” Pitch looks down at the ground. “Though I was of two minds when I said it, years ago. Now, I’m of only one mind. I still meant it. I still mean it. There’s something about you that makes me almost remember…Regardless, I knew what was likely to happen to you if you weren’t helped. I thought I could—as a parent might help a child.” He shows dark gray marks on his palms. “But touching the staff only burned me. I wasn’t needed or wanted. So I found someone who was.” He begins to walk away. “Keep in mind that he’s only human, Jack. He’s fragile, and the night is cold.” Without another word, he vanishes into the shadows under the trees.  
  
Jack and Jamie look at each other. Suddenly, with Pitch gone, Jamie starts shaking. “I thought you were going to die Jack oh my god oh my god oh my god and earlier I thought you hadn’t visited me because I was too old and I never want to lose you and,” he takes a shuddering breath, “okay that’s kind of weird.”  
  
“Was Pitch keeping you calm or what?”  
  
“Yeah, basically. I just need to recover.”  
  
“Can I help?” Jack brings Jamie’s hand to his mouth and kisses his knuckles.  
  
“Yes.” Jamie smiles. “But, um, Pitch was kind of right about the night being cold. We could…go back to my car.”  
  
“It’s what teenagers do, right?” Jack says mischievously. “I’ll fly us there.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Oddly, the wind is so bad the next day that the park ranger gives up trying to write Jamie a ticket for being in the park outside the posted hours. 


End file.
